1000 IN SIX WEEKS.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 207, 1 September 1924, Page 9

1000 IN SIX WEEKS.

M7SX.BOTr.RirE ROBBERIES. KET LOSS, £14,660. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYD2STBY, August 28. The bank robbery at the English, Scottish and Australian Bank, North Essendon, on Monday afternoon, when « two men, under a threat to shoot, over- J powered, bound, and gagged the young < clerk in charge, and stole £350, marks '< the culmination of Melbourne's crime orgy. ] James Hobson, the clerk, was found < trussed to a chair, in an exhausted con- 1 dition, half an hour a-fter the robbery ' had been carried out. The hold-up men - were seen by a young woman next door ' to leave the bank and drive away in a i yellow car, and it was this girl -who gave the alarm. ( Within the last sis , weeks over 1000 thefts have been reported to the Melbourne police, and the haul of stolen property is estimated at £14,660. . Very few arrests have been made, : though 167 shops and houses were . entered, and £5275 worth of property was stolen. The series of robberies under : arms totals 14, and more than £660 was taken from the victims. Property stolen amounts to more than £2440 a week, or £349 daily, and a review of household robberies in the metropolitan area shows an average of about five a day. Hold-up men prowl the streets etiH, and nightly men and women are subjected to brutal treatment and robbery without any arrests being made. The bank robbery is taken to mark the climax of crime, for it was committed in broad daylight, and the thieves made off in leisurely fashion, as though disdainful of the fact that the police station is within a stone's throw of the premises they had just rifled. Melbourne is a great city.